Many Americans who overindulged on Thanksgiving may be thinking a
bit of antimatter might not be a bad idea right about now. Well, you
don't really want to run into the stuff - we mean, the anti-stuff.

But an international group of scientists working at CERN, the
particle lab near Geneva, Switzerland, has, more or less, done exactly
that. They have capped five years of work by containing, for the first
time, a few atoms of antimatter.

Although antimatter particles have been known about and created in
labs for some time, they had never before been held in captivity, so to
speak. The CERN team did so by using a powerful magnetic bottle that
held an atom of antihydrogen in its grip for 170 milliseconds.

That's not long, but it's a lot longer than nothing, and
raises hope that scientists will one day be able to study antimatter
more closely, expanding humankind's understanding of the
fundamental nature of the universe, and just why the stuff we see all
around us is stuff all around us.

Now, back to the matter at hand - Thanksgiving leftovers.

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